I mailed OpenDNS support about it and received an email in reply acknowledging that the site contains no nudity - but they have not removed the block. It is still labelled as "Tagged: Nudity; Who voted on this domain: opendns Moderator"

That was several days ago. I have contacted them further and they are not replying on the subject.

It seems that OpenDNS provides easy methods for tagging sites as Adult, but they provide no support to remove the tag even then they admit the tag is wrong. Incorrect categorization can cause damage to a domain's reputation.

Any ideas from the community on how I can escalate this? I have spoken with a lawyer and he has suggested that legal action may be the only option if they will not remove the block.

I am not including the domain name in this post because I am not write this to get publicity, and I don't want spikes in traffic. I simply want to know a quick solution to removing an incorrect tag that OpenDNS themselves have admitted is incorrect.

There is no option or information there about Open DNS adult sites. Further, it is OpenDNS which is blocking the site - as such, it is them that is responsible for the error. I don't care how they have implemented the system, I just want the error corrected.

I feel they have completely washed their hands of the issue. They make it easy to mark sites as ADULT but offer ZERO option to remove the block when it is incorrect, and their support is useless. Thanks to OpenDNS, my NON ADULT website is being classified as adult.

Despite acknowledging that the site is incorrectly categorized, they are doing nothing about it.

First of all, OpenDNS is free. They are under no obligation to support you or any of us. And yet they do so willingly for free. Learn some patience!! If you haven't noticed, there are hundreds of thousands of users, thousands of requests, ideas, complaints, etc. and OpenDNS's staff is limited. By the way, they are only human and they have a life besides OpenDNS! To think you have the right to push your little problem ahead of everyone else's and to demand immediate attention is beyond my understanding. Have patience!

Second of all, OpenDNS gets their Adult data mainly from St. Bernards. Since you will not give an address, I cannot verify if it came from St. Bernards or if it was determined Adult by our community. If it was from St. Bernards, which is apparently the case since they sent you that link, your battle is with them!! Yes, OpenDNS could whitelist your site, but guess what: Any other company that uses St. Bernard's data, including St. Bernard itself, will have your site blacklisted still!!! Wow, you sure can accomplish a lot by bashing OpenDNS instead of complaining to the REAL SOURCE!

Thrid, it is NOT easy to have a site categorized in any way, including Adult. It goes through a voting process, and after which comes to the moderators for the final say so. The moderators, myself included, actually view the site to VERIFY it's tag is accurate. And you think there is NO OPTION to remove the block? There just so happens to be a link you can click on upon visiting the blocked site. It's called "Not Properly Categorized". It allows you to have the site submitted for a review!

Finally, "they are doing nothing about it"? Do you seriously believe you are the only issue that OpenDNS has to deal with right now?? Chill out dude!! It may seem like a "small" fix, but you have NO IDEA the full details behind the situation and what must be done to fix it.

You are right about one thing, I have NO IDEA what must be done to fix it - because OpenDNS are not providing those details.

However, according to the OpenDNS webpage which reports my site as containing nudity even though it does not, it was OpenDNS who "voted" the listing as containing nudity. Hence, my "battle" is with OpenDNS since they blacklisted the site incorrectly. It is them that should ensure the incorrect listing is reversed.

Secondly, if OpenDNS are providing ways to blacklist sites but can't handle the support load when it does wrong, then they shouldn't be implementing the scheme in the first place. In the very least, they could have a standard reply which says "You need to contact St Bernards at this exact URL to have the site rereviewed." They do not. They point to a URL where there is no link or information about getting blocks removed. If you can find the place at St Bernards which relates to lifting incorrect Adult site blocking then feed free to tell me - because I certainly can't.

>> It's called "Not Properly Categorized".

This does not appear for Adult sites. The URL they give for St Bernards contains no information about removing the categorization. Hence there being ZERO way to remove the block.

It's clear that you love OpenDNS - and I did too until I discovered this error - but you should also try to see things in perspective. The reputation of my domain has been affected and is still being affected by inappropriate adult classification, and OpenDNS, as the people who have made that inappropriate classification, are doing nothing about it.

I don't WANT to battle and fight them. They have admitted the classification is wrong but are doing nothing about it. I only want them to fix the incorrect classification and to place clear instructions on their website on how others who are in the same position as myself can have incorrect classifications reversed. Is that too much to ask?

If the site wasn't submitted *here* (OpenDNS site) to an 'adult' or 'nudity' or whatever category, its entry is among those entries on the feed/list being fed to OpenDNS by St. Bernard. That's a different organization, so that's why OpenDNS staff would have necessarily referred you to St. Bernard to have the issue corrected.

If your site has no nudity TODAY, did it have any yesterday? Last month?Did you perhaps purchase a domain which had previously been registered to another party? If so, they may have put the domain to seedy use (and the site was reviewed & added to someone's "list" back then). If indeed you have purchased a "previously enjoyed" domain or, in the future when you consider purchasing such, you might visit www.archive.org to examine what content had been hosted there previously.

Does the domain offer "hosting" for other users? If so, without your knowledge and or consent, there may be nudity displayed among the user content you're hosting. If so, this is a f'rinstance where you -- as the domain owner -- are winding up being 'held accountable' for the content.

Another consideration:Do you participate in an advertising program which involves displaying graphics hosted elsewhere via code(s) embedded in your site's pages? If so, they may well have snuck one (or many) overly-provocative graphics into the rotation. Ouch! That has happened to me on several occasions -- sign up for category xyz ads ONLY, but the adhouse 'accidently' inserts ad images (especially afterhours, what a coincidence) ...images that may offend your site audience.

FWIW, I think your decision to refrain from publicly stating the affected domain here was prudent. I trust that the affected 'domain' you are referring to is a root domain -- somesite.tld -- if not, if it is a subdomain of a shared host... all bets are off; you may not be in control of, or even aware of, the content which the reviewer observed. Also, in case the domain bears a 'suspicious' name like www.mi-puta-es-mas-viejo-que-su-puta.com ...understand that whoemver re-evealuates the site content will likely place it on their 'short list' and RE-recheck it, repeately, to verify that any 'flaggable' content hasn't just been removed temporarily.

While the feed may come from an external source, it is Open DNS who is using it to inform people that my site contains nudity. They have a responsibility to correct errors, not just wash their hands of the errors. Can ANYONE find ANY way to get St Bernard or Open DNS to take action? I can't - despite numerous emails.

From what I can see they are slandering my domain by saying it contains nudity when it does not. They are not taking any action.

You're accusing them of slander? That's hilarious! Slander is oral defamation. You're thinking of libel, but even that is laughable.

If it's classified as a nudity site, it's because somebody at St. Bernard decided it was. Here's their definition of nudity:

"This category refers to sites that provide images or representations of nudity. They may be in any artistic or non-artistic form like magazines, pictures, paintings, sculptures, etc. This category should be assigned to those sites that display both partial and full nudity but the images are not pornographic in nature."

That's obviously pretty broad, but then again, I've never had any of my users ask about a site they thought was improperly labeled as such.

Slander or libel - whatever. It still contains no nudity, artistic or not - and by labelling my site as containing nudity, they are not only blocking the site to visitors, but causing damage to my domain's reputation.

Again, the challenge remains: Can ANYONE find ANY way to get St Bernard or Open DNS to take action when a domain is incorrectly categorized as adult? There is no information on the St Bernard or Open DNS site on how to progress.

You have already used the only 2 ways of getting the problem resolved. Unfortunately, your impatience through numerous e-mails, threatening the people you want to assist you (lawyer), and insulting them by saying they're doing nothing has basically just screwed yourself!

I don't know where you come from or what your situation is in life, but asking someone, especially a stranger, to do something and then telling them "you are doing nothing" or "you washed your hands clean of the issue" is really DE-MOTIVATING. It REALLY makes them feel like IGNORING you instead of HELPING you.

You are not the only person here with a problem, and certainly not the only thing on OpenDNS's mind of things that need to fix. You've lost my pity, and I couldn't care less about your domain's reputation. You sir, have dug your own grave by not knowing how to communicate properly with people. Now deal with it! I will waste no more time with the likes of you.

By the way, you may want to read OpenDNS's terms of service. If you decide to look at taking legal action, they've already taken care of that possibility in their terms of service.

I've spoked to St Bernard. They tell me the site categoration was changed away from Nudity after review a few days ago - they just never replied to tell me that. Open DNS are continuing, and have been continuing for days, to report the site as nudity and, as per usual, are not reponding to support requests.

Quite frankly, you're missing the point that I politely contacted Open DNS, and I was patient with them. It's only after they failed to do anything about the issue that I involved a lawyer. If I contact them through support means and they ignore the contact or refuse to correct reporting my site as adult, I don't think I have any option except to contact a lawyer. Waiting "patiently" when zero action is taking place is not an option.

BTW, Open DNS T&S are irrelevant. I know they are miscategorizing my domain as nudity. Even if I'm not a member, they are reporting to other people that my domain is adult when it is not. Therefore I can still take legal action.

Don't you think you are getting out of hand with this? If your site was misidentified then you should take steps to have it corrected. This cannot be done overnight nor can everyone working drop everything they are doing just to cater to you. OpenDNS has stated, and I am sure you know, that they get adult/nudity/etc site info from a third-party (St.Bernard). IMO, you need to go to St.Bernard to get this resolved. This is very similar to when you have something wrong with your credit report. If you go to buy a car and you get turned down for something in your credit report, you don't expect the car dealer to settle the matter for you, do you?I think you are making an unecessary monster out of this...ONLY people who are using OpenDNS, AND have Adult/Nudity category blocked, AND want to go to you site, are affected. A very small percent of internet users if you ask me. Please be patient. The matter is being taken care of. Relax.

Considering the indignation he must be experiencing, the person who started this thread did so with respectful prose. I'm appalled to see that his inquiry has been met with criticism and "fanboi" -sounding backlash.

The lights are on... but nobody is steering the ship? WTF?!? No moderator, no staff member has passed through the forums and noticed this thread... or they HAVE, and chose to ignore this?

lemonsoju, my only suggestion at this point is to telephone OpenDNS at the number shown in the page footer. If you can't reach them by phone, I would (in your shoes) take your story "to the news". Wired, Technorati, whatever -- they love to run "innocent little guy trampled by corporate machine" articles.

This is supposed to be a COMMUNITY.@wiz and mama: I dearly respect your commitment; I'll respect you moreso when I return to this thread and find your apologies posted.

From the criticism I received, no-one seems to have seen that I did initially contact Open DNS and request politely that they change the listing. I posted the question "how to remove?" to the community only because I couldn't get any reaction from Open DNS.

For what it's worth, xrez.com is in the same boat. It's tagged as porn and nudity, but it's an extreme-resolution photography site. The guy running it is hosting really cool zoomable hi-res pics of the Grand Canyon, Hawaii, Downtown New York, etc. The only boobies anywhere near that site are three miles away sitting on a park bench entirely covered by clothing.

I don't see how two people reviewed it and found it to be remotely adult-oriented.

Weird.

It's almost like St. Bernard used some kind of name analysis software to chuck it in a bin under the assumption that a site with an 'x' at the beginning of the name absolutely has to be porn no matter what.

Anyway, I am trying to figure out where to report this gross miscarriage of categorization because the xres.com dude is doing good work and deserves better.

gsarnold, you are probably onto something here. St.Bernard may be filtering based on a name/character/combination algorithm. Your example site contain letters SEX plus one other character. It also starts with letter X. This would be contrary to St.Bernard's statement that all of their sites are humanly viewed and confirmed. If this is so, than St.Bernard is bs and my apologies for upsetting anyone.

>>It's almost like St. Bernard used some kind of name analysis software<<

That's what I thought when I could not get to hotflicks.com! They must have banned it for its name. How ridiculous. That site is about movies. It was at that point that I went to my dashboard and turned off the filtering of adult sites.

As much as I hate porn, I am willing to risk an occasional exposure to it rather than have a totally sterilized Internet with no access to many decent sites that were mislabeled as "adult" by some religious zealot (as the name "St. Bernard" would suggest).

redprince, hotflicks.com hasn't been submitted/voted here, nor does it seem to be on the StBernard list.

xrez.com should be removed from the nudity category.Considering what lemonsoju has reported, I'm not sure how (or even IF) OpenDNS can handle its removal. The xrez.com domain is also present on the StBernard list. In any event, wiz submitted it here and sparko (me) voted it.

"I don't see how two people reviewed it and found it to be remotely adult-oriented."That's damn good (and important) question.

I apologize for my inaccurate contribution here. This MUST be a recycled (expired/re-registerd) domain -- it is definitely "on my list". In trying to understand the "how" in this instance, I think what happened is: the domain entry was present on wizmo's list as well, he and I both used the bulk-submitter, and because the entry matched (was present in) the StBernard list as well, the system approved the entry without awaiting further votes.

Clearly the system needs to be tweaked to have additional checks-n-balances added. Until then, I'm suspending my voting/submitting activity. For the sake of ABSOLUTE ACCURACY, maybe all the bulk submissions should be purged? Hmm, even that measure can't prevent repercussions from inaccurate entries within the StBernard list.

Do you have any power/sway with open DNS to get them to resolve issues with these two domains?

Although St B have told me my domain is not categorised as Nudity, Open DNS still report it as so. I cannot get them to respond to support, and although I have asked St B to speak with Open DNS on why they are still reporting the site incorrectly, but they will not do so. Since St B's name is proudly listed as being responsible for the blocking, you'd think they would have some interest in helping resolve the issue.

Now that we have the problem with xrez, I'm wondering whether my domain will continue to be tagged as Nudity due to some domain filtering even though it's not explicitly set in the Nudity category manually.

When I first read the policy on Nudity, I did some basic checking. I noticed art.com is not listed in any category, even though it is a huge site and contains nudes on certain pages. By St B & Open DNS's policies, one nude should get it classified as Nudity - right?

"This category refers to sites that provide images or representations of nudity. They may be in any artistic or non-artistic form like magazines, pictures, paintings, sculptures, etc."

When writing the policy, they specifically mentioned art sites - but they didn't bother to check one of the biggest art sites on the net? I wonder if they are being "selective" on how strict they are, hammering onto small sites that have no power to take legal action.

Quite frankly, the lack of response from Open DNS and St B, and not checking this forum either - it's ridiculous. They are putting out press releases claiming that they have this wonderful blocking service, making it appear that they are a professional service, and they clearly can't handle the service they are boasting they provide. They are providing no support when it goes wrong.

I do believe they are leaving themselves legally open to trouble. You cannot go around saying "This site contains nudity!" when it does not, and then continue to say it when you are told otherwise - even when you have sent emails admitting that the site contains no nudity!

I want to say again: Thank you to everyone who is now looking at this issue seriously. In the beginning I got so many responses slagging me off saying I should just accept it and I'm a fiend for saying anything wrong about Open DNS, that I actually started to dread the notification of new message updates.

lemonsoju, I'm out of ideas/suggestions for you, except to suggest there's a slim possibility that a misconfigured ISP proxy is returning a cached version (the blockpage content). To rule out that possibility, you could ask someone who is connected via another ISP (and using OpenDNS) to check.

Regardless how inclusive, and how accurate we are in building the categorical list(s), I wonder whether my participation amounts to "having served the role of mouse on a treadwheel". If OpenDNS treats the result of our efforts as 'proprietary data' instead of providing access to the cumulative "raw" lists(s) as downloadable, in my book they'll be just "another StBernard".

Quote from the broadband reports thread:"Please note, all of this data CAN be blocked by stopping access to the following site: www.incredibarvuz1.com/ It in no way affects the program to the best of my knowledge".

So, all you have to do is put an entry in your hosts file like this. Simple:127.0.0.1 www.incredibarvuz1.com

If you feel Incredimail is Adware then vote that way. In any event, how the heck did it get to be classified as Pornography/Nudity? That's what I want to know. I think "the fine folks at St. Bernard Software" may have had a little to much to drink. Perhaps a change to "the fine fools at St. Bernard Softwear" is in order.

Actually, as of yesterday, at least until an OpenDNS staff member shows up in this "community" forum to address numerous significant issues which have been raised... I've discontinued my use of the OpenDNS servers as well. Who cares? My loss. Just one schmuck. The TOP schmuck, per community 'stats', but what the hey...

Okay, mama, here's a chuckle for ya:The ROI of Good Will http://www.scoutlabs.com/blog/^---- ScoutLabs is 'sister' of OpenDNS (funded by the same venture capital firm)

Wow. Site is loaded with nudity. Put up some more please. just kiddin'

Sorry the problem is not yet fixed. I guess you have to "hound them to death", like send emails every few hours. Also, when going to your site using OpenDNS, do you get the Guide page? If so, there is a link for "Not properly categorized?". Click it and flag the site for review.Good luck. Keep up the determination and you will succeed.

> If so, there is a link for "Not properly categorized?". Click it and flag the site for review.

When a site is in the Adult category, there is no "Not properly categorized" option - they simply refer you to St Bernard, WITHOUT telling which page on the St Bernard website allows you to get a website reviewed.

For what it's worth, I've been constantly emailing St Bernard and Open DNS - to the extent that St Bernard said "Stop emailing us!" and told me that my site is not categorised as Nudity with them and that the problem is with Open DNS.

I posted a request on the "contacts" page. Essentially, I followed this thread with interest and I am somewhat surprised (and disappointed) at the ease one seems to have of tagging a site as "porn" while finding no clear method whatsoever to have it reversed. St-Bernard reversed it yet OpenDNS is silent. The fact that OpenDNS is free and that volounteers run it (assumption on my part) should have no effect. As a matter of fact, if OpenDNS is so popular, then it's even more the reason to have better support.

One should remember that (a) it's opendns.com, so it's not an non-profit .org, and (b) they make money from advertising - when you mistype a domain and are given a search page. There seems to be a general assumption that opendns is almost a "charity" run by "good people", while forgetting that they are promising a level of service in press releases, and they are receiving money through advertising. For all we know, they could be making a substantial profit - after all, it's pretty much all automated to the extent that they don't even read support emails (that being based on the fact that I've sent them 10's of emails and had no response).

What I don't understand is if St.Bernard said they removed the site then it would not be on the file they send to OpenDNS for loading into the database. This is probably a weekly or so process. So, most likely the problem is on OpenDNS end. I assume they have the "source" of the record (like St.Bernard) on the database record too. What I think is happening is OpenDNS is just adding new St.Bernard records and leaving the old ones on, like lemonsoju's. What I think needs to be done is OpenDNS should remove all records on current database which originated from St.Bernard and then add the new file, thus lemonsoju's site would be removed automatically.This is just my technical opinion of course. This is something OpenDNS would have to look into. Hopefully they will see this post and reply.

PS: This should have nothing to do with tagging done by OpenDNS members. I don't believe members tagged lemonsoju's site improperly.

Some people in this world just need to learn patience and the fact that they are not the only one with a problem. In addition, professional businesses, like OpenDNS, must go through careful procedures to rectify situations like these to ensure the proper handling of the matter, without accidentally making matters worse. Finally, proper documentation ensures that future similar situations are handled in like manner, and the documentation of the history of a site and the reasons for the tag helps too.

If businesses had to make public every little detail of what they had to go through to accomplish something, just to satisfy every OCD person who must know exactly what's going on, their productivity would be reduced drastically.

And I'm sure it may have gone a little faster if they hadn't had to spend time to read through all the e-mails and forum posts about the same exact issue.

I'm new to OpenDNS and understand my status as someone who has never posted previously, but I gotta say that if you consider 15 days to be "coming through", you have really low standards of service. If a small business loses connectivity for 15 days, it can send it under. How do you think a "bricks-and-mortar" business would do if somebody spraypainted "pornographer" on the front window and it was left for 15 days?

I must side with those who feel this is an example of harmful practices and poor remedial support.

There were TWO parties involved in the problem resolution... St.Bernard and OpenDNS. I am sure it was not a top priority issue, like drop everything you are doing and work on this. The site is not Google. It probably gets a few dozen hits a day, and would only be blocked if the user was using OpenDNS servers and has a block on the Nudity category. So, this narrows it down a bit to about 2 or 3 people a day. Woopity doo.

My domain name was mentioned in private emails to Open DNS only. In fact, in forum posts I specifically did not mention my domain name and highlighted that fact, because I do not want irrelevant traffic coming to my domain from Open DNS forums. Quote from the first post in this thread:

<< I am not including the domain name in this post because I am not writ[ing] this to get publicity, and I don't want spikes in traffic. I simply want to know a quick solution to removing an incorrect tag that OpenDNS themselves have admitted is incorrect. >>

Since my domain name was mentioned in private correspondence only, I do not believe it is appropriate for you to explicitly mention it in public forums. I have telephoned you direct about this but I received voicemail only. Please remove the mentions to my domain name from your forums.

I've just found out that on the same day as Nudity was removed from my main domain, Open DNS added the Nudity tag to a SUBDOMAIN of my main domain. The subdomain was newly created by me ~2 weeks ago and contains no nudity. As far as I am aware, the listing didn't exist at Open DNS until the Nudity tag was removed from my main domain (it suddenly started appearing in the search listings today only).

To Daniel (dgifford, the OpenDNS support contact) - How can I:1) Get the nudity tag removed from the subdomain2) Get the explicit mention of my domain name - which I didn't want mentioned publically and which was only mentioned in private correspondence to Open DNS - removed from all your public posts on this forum (you've mentioned it on 3 separate posts)

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